Integrated circuits (IC) have become one of the most necessary components in modern devices. From automobiles and cell phones, to kitchen appliances and video gaming devices, integrated circuits provide a variety of functions. To provide this variety in an optimized manner, application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) may be utilized.
An application specific integrated circuit is generally designed for a specific application rather than as a general-purpose chip. The use of application specific integrated circuits improve performance over general-purpose chips, because application specific integrated circuits are “hardwired” to do a specific job, and may thus, not incur the overhead of fetching and interpreting stored instructions. Thus, an application specific integrated circuit may perform an electronic operation in an optimized manner providing that the circuit design is efficiently architected.
However, producing such a wide range of application specific integrated circuits, each having targeted functionality, may be complex, expensive and time consuming. For example, the very size of the circuit, which may include a variety of clock domains, may require extensive testing, verification and redesign before an operational model is produced.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for optimizing an integrated circuit design.